Girl on Girl Cooking

Pumpkin Bread Pudding

2006-10-13T10:03:00.000-07:00

(Insert random excuse why neither of us has posted in so long)

It’s fall in Southern California, and while the temperature isn’t all that cold, fall foods beckon. Especially my favorite squash, pumpkin. The dear husband, also a pumpkin lover, and bread pudding lover, volunteered me to make a pumpkin bread pudding for Nick’s raging fall party. I settled on a recipe from epicurious, but being who I am I didn’t follow the recipe exactly.

The first thing that I did differently, noted in the video, was substitute half the bread for some leftover Trader Joe’s pumpkin bread. The other half I used egg bread, specifically challah. The pumpkin bread had a lot of raisins, so I omitted the golden raisins. To the custard I added 1 heaping tablespoon of pumpkin butter. Baked for 50 minutes, and served with vanilla ice cream. It was so tasty it didn’t need the fancy caramel sauce, but I bet it was good too.

2006-06-15T11:26:00.000-07:00

There is nothing more upsetting than finding the World's Most Perfect Peach on the bottom of your bag, a bruised and juicy mess.

Egg Sandwich, Re-Vamped

2006-05-11T09:29:00.000-07:00

You know how I've been complaining about a lack of interesting breakfast ideas? I accidentally came up with a good one today.

I was planning on making turkey bacon, toast,eggs, and guzzling down a glass of orange juice. But I realized that I was short on time and would have to figure out how to take everything to-go, so I turned my breakfast into an egg sandwich. The problem was, I reeeeeeeeally wanted that orange juice, and since I don't have cup-holders in my car I was forced to get creative. Last week at a rehearsal for an extremely sexy Bulgarian women's choir, one of the girls brought coffee in a jar. I was floored by this simple innovation -- It was a jar!! With a lid!! No more coffee spills from supposedly spill-proof mugs! No more stale coffee smells permeating my car! No more showing up at work with coffee stains on my pants! Brilliant!

And so I was inspired to take my orange juice in a jar (with a lid!!!). I looked around my kitchen for a mostly-empty jar, and happened upon a jar of olive tapenade. Tapenade on my egg sandwhich? Sounds tasty! Next to the tapenade, there was a small bag of neglected onion sprouts, which also sounded tasty.

And so my re-vamped egg sandwich was born:
-2 slices multi-grain toast
-2 slices lean turkey bacon, fried
-2 eggs, any way you like 'em
-onion sprouts
-the rest of the tapenade in the jar

Ta-da!

The Perfect Granola?

2006-02-21T09:58:00.000-08:00

Friends of GOGC, I have a quandry. I am in love with some rather expensive granola over at Urth Caffe. As far as I can tell, it consists of oats, almonds, raisins, pumpkin seeds, dried cranberries, spices, and a little honey. But there's more to it, and I just can't figure it out. It's perfect because it's oven-baked, so it's dry and crunchy, it's not too sweet, and the different textures make each spoonful interesting.

Anybody got any good granola recipes?

Better suited for St. Patrick's Day?

2006-02-14T21:52:00.000-08:00

I can’t remember if M and I have ever eaten out on Valentine’s Day. Here’s our simple V-day dinner menu:

Grilled Halibut Steaks with Shallots, Pepper and Basil
Halibut steaks were rubbed with EVOO, salt, lemon pepper then grilled on direct heat. While the steaks were grilling I sautéed a chopped shallot and crushed red pepper in EVOO, added white wine, boiled until reduced by about half. Mixed in some chopped basil. Spooned the sauce over fish.

Grilled Asparagus
Asparagus was dressed with EVOO, salt and lots of lemon zest. I do love my microplane.

Salad
Baby greens, croutons, and Parmesan cheese, dressed with lemon juice, honey and EVOO

Farm Brownie with Double Rainbow French Vanilla Ice Cream and Chocolate Sunflower Seed Drops

The Chocolate Sunflower Seed Drops are a Trader Joe's find. They are sunflower seeds coated in chocolate then candy covered. What made me buy them was the fact that they are free of artificial flavors, colors and preservatives, hence why they aren't crazy colored. They are really unbelievable; neither the chocolate nor the candy coating dominates the sunflower seed.

Valentine's Day Drinking Chocolate - Video Recipe Card #1

2006-02-13T23:02:00.000-08:00

Specially for Valentine's Day, here's the first GOGC video podcast! In just a few minutes, learn to make some delicious drinking chocolate... like Chantico from Starbucks, but better.

Download Video Recipe Card #1 right here (video iPod compatible)

The Good vs. EvilCast

2006-01-22T22:28:00.000-08:00

Listen as your beloved co-hosts tackle dark chocolate infusions and GoGurt in the same evening! That's right: GoGurt.

Download The Good vs. EvilCast here...

We still like food.

2006-01-17T16:17:00.000-08:00

Hey all. Sorry for the hiatus. We've been having a bit of a blog depression. But we're back and doubly committed to blogging about our food adventures.

Recently I've had more than a few culinary disasters as a result of overly-cocky experimentation. Some highlights include:
-Making a tofu sautee and forgetting the tofu
-a HORRIFYING dessert composed of vanilla ice cream, nasty salty peanut butter, and a dark bitter chocolate sauce which should never have seen the light of day
-about a dozen uninspired salads

I think this sort of thing happens when I get over-confident with my cooking skills. I take things for granted, like the amount of time it takes for something to really marinate, or chopping everything to roughly the same size so that it cooks uniformly, or just thoughtful composition of ingredients. When I have a series of disasters, it's just the universe reminding me not to get too full of myself. Maybe it's time to take a class and learn something new.

In any case, I've been following recipes more closely. I tried a tuna and white bean salad out of Giada De Laurentiis' book "Everyday Italian", and it came out protein-packed and super tasty. I don't think I'm legally allowed to post her recipe here, but here's a picture of how it turned out:

I've also decided to adopt Paula's habit of consuming one or two pieces of dark chocolate every day. For, um, antioxidants! Yeah! That's the ticket!

Episode 5 - guest hosted!

2006-01-12T23:09:00.000-08:00

It's Freaky Friday, so this week's Girl on Girl Cooking has been taken over by Nick and Eti of Pop Whore!

Download it here...

If you're looking for Rossanna and Paula, they're over here this week!

Greek Products, Lemon Mousse Cheesecake, and a formal apology for the pineapple comment.

2005-12-09T12:31:00.000-08:00

Buncha things from the podcast:

Here's where to go to get imported Greek products in LA:

http://www.papacristo.com/

You can get Barbagianni ouzo, two varieties of paximadi - barley and rye (I prefer barley), Greek olive oil, and lots of other tasty Greek things. T and I had a lovely dish of grilled feta cheese and tomatoes, along with a super-stuffed gyro with cool, creamy tzaziki.

Sometime soon I'll do a separate post about stuff to bring home from Greece, should you be so fortunate as to travel there. Leave me some comments if you've been to Greece recently and brought home something tasty.
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Here's the lemon cheesecake recipe I mentioned in the podcast and promised to link:

http://tinyurl.com/dbykx

This was AMAZING! But I don't recommend the sour cream topping. It's fantastic without it.
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Oh yeah, and pineapples? They don't grow upside down. I lied. I'm sorry.
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Vegetable Stock

2005-12-04T20:35:00.000-08:00

I must be feeling particularly conscientious and perhaps a bit frugal. This afternoon I decided to try my hand at making vegetable stock. I cleared out the refrigerator of vegetables about to make their journey to the big black bin in the backyard known as the Earth Machine. The celery, carrots, green onion, parsley, red onion, and bok choy had a little more living left to do. First, I coarsely chopped them up. Then put them in a pot and added water.

The pot was about half vegetables half water. I added a bay leaf and whole peppercorns for flavor. I brought it up to a boil, and then let it simmer for a little over an hour. Once cooled, and strained I was left with a vegetable stock. The bok choy was the most prominent smell. In the future perhaps I would leave it out, so as to not dominate the mix.

Some of the stock I used in place of water while cooking a brown rice medley. This added depth and flavor to the rice with out adding the fat of butter. The rest is in the freezer for now. I plan on using it to sauté vegetables, booster soups/stews and in anything that calls for vegetable stock.

It feels good to not be wasteful, but it tastes even better.

Episode 4

2005-12-02T20:48:00.000-08:00

Gourmet PB&J, Gardens of Taxco, summer booze, the Earth Machine, and family recipes... oh yeah, and the secret of how fruit grows! It's all here...

Download Girl on Girl Cooking Episode 4!

Turkey Soup/Turkey Potpie and the Turkey Crack Whore

2005-11-29T21:35:00.000-08:00

This was my first year to host Thanksgiving. This was the first time I cooked a turkey. Not just any turkey, but a twenty-one pound organically fed, no antibiotics given, free-range Whole Foods turkey, kind of Thanksgiving. We have never started small in my family.

Despite all my minor and major freak-outs and stressful moments, Thanksgiving Day went off without a hitch. We ate with in 15minutes to my estimated time, people had seconds, thirds, and M said it as the best Thanksgiving dinner he ever ate (and if he is smart he will continue to have the ‘best Thanksgiving dinner ever’ every year I cook).

I learned two unanticipated lessons from this Thanksgiving. The first being, the one dish I did entirely on my own with no help, prep, from anyone one but myself, was the one that I was most disappointed in. The sweet potatoes. It wasn’t the recipe or the flavors that disappointed me but my own personal mistake. I didn’t have enough olive oil on the roasting pan and the sweet potatoes over browned on their bottoms. Goes to show that sometimes doing something on your own isn’t always the best way. The second lesson I learned was that leftovers, i.e. the opportunity to make turkey soup was the best part of hosting Thanksgiving. The sweet reward to my tired feet and aching back of non-stop cooking on Thanksgiving was rewarded on Friday evening with the slurping of Turkey soup.

Here’s how I made my turkey soup. I can only assume it is basic because it seemed pretty simple and tasty to me.

Take the turkey carcass, and place in pot. In my case the turkey carcass was bigger than my largest pot so I split in half in order to fit it all in the same pot. I added water, to make the turkey stock. Once the turkey was falling off the bone, I let the pot cool. I removed the carcass and strained out all the stock into smaller pot. I picked off all the turkey from the carcass, and removed the stray stuffing that had gotten in the mix. I replaced all the turkey in the smaller pot with the stock and refrigerated over night. On Friday evening, removed the pot from the refrigerator skimmed off all the coagulated fat from the top then placed on the stovetop to heat up. I added chopped onion, celery and carrots to the pot and some additional water and chicken stock. I let everything simmer together till the vegetables were cooked. To give the soup a hearty feel but without adding the typical noodles; I boiled up some dried mini-cheese ravioli. I served the soup topped with a sprinkling of pecorino romano cheese.

The other leftover creation I made from the turkey was a turkey potpie. I followed the guidance in one of the basic cookbooks in my collection. I used a ready-made piecrust (we made all our own pie crusts for the Thanksgiving pies) turkey, chicken broth, milk, flour and veggies I had on hand. It really was a quick and easy way to use up more of the turkey, since it only took about 15 minutes once I popped it in the oven. In the future I would add mushrooms and perhaps red peppers.

All this turkey has made the feline in our home a fiend. She looooves turkey. She craves turkey. She won’t let me open up a container of leftover turkey without whining at me incessantly. Sometimes I feel like her dealer, but mostly I am just grateful for the help with the leftovers.

Turkey Leftovers - Butternut Squash Turkey Curry

2005-11-28T08:19:00.000-08:00

First of all, I'd like to know how I wound up with turkey leftovers when we made lamb for our Thanksgiving dinner. And the crazy thing is - there is no lamb in the fridge! Musta just gotten up in the middle of the night and walked out! What gives??

Last night night I accidentally made something pretty tasty with the leftover turkey. It goes like this:

-1 cup leftover turkey, shredded
-1/2 cup vegetable stock
-2 cups of pre-made pureed butternut squash soup (you know, the super-bland stuff in a box at TJ's)
-1/2 of a medium yellow onion, chopped
-4 cloves garlick, smashed
-few tablespoons of olive oil
-1 tablespoon of curry powder, or more if you're into that
-1/2 teaspoon of cumin
-salt/pepper

I started off by sauteeing the onion and garlick cloves in olive oil with a little salt and pepper. Once they got a little soft, I added the curry and the cumin and sauteed for about a minute. I threw in the turkey with a little more olive oil and let it warm up and absorb the tasty flavors. When things started drying up, I threw in the vegetable stock. After simmering for another minute or two, I added the butternut squash soup. When the soup was nice and warm, it was ready to eat. But if you have some fresh cilantro lying around, maybe throw that on top as a garnish.

This soup turned out really thick and hearty. Next time I make it, I might use it more like a curry by thickening it with something and eating it over rice. Flavor-wise, it was spicy and aromatic and very different from most turkey leftovers. And it was a really pretty shade of golden yellow, too. Vegetarians of the world may want to replace the turkey with tofu or something green like bok choy, and maybe spike it with some slivered red chilies or bell peppers for color....oh man that sounds AWESOME!!

Episode 3

2005-11-26T22:39:00.000-08:00

Hydrogenated oils, vegan dinners, Global knives, double-frozen salmon, and much more.

Download Girl on Girl Cooking Episode 3 right here.

My Thanksgiving Menu (Maybe)

2005-11-23T10:40:00.000-08:00

This year for Thanksgiving, my crew is dropping its pants in the face of tradition and wiggling its behind at it mockingly. After a No-Turkey decree was issued by my significant other this year, I was forced to build my dinner around another dead animal. I chose lamb because it's a meat I don't work with very often, so it feels festive. Oh, and as usual, we'll be cooking on Friday instead of Thursday. This enables us to hit another dinner on Thursday. Hee hee.

My tentative menu is as follows:

-Roasted tomatoes, swimming in olive oil and garlick and herbs, with a nice baguette
-Stripey melons wrapped in prosciutto
-Roasted lamb with pomegranate glaze
-Creamy Stilton mashed potatoes
-Roasted carrots
-Fatush salad
-Pear/hazelnut cobbler
-Vanilla ice cream

We have a whole wine-rack full of bottles we've picked up over the last year, and we'll definitely bust some open for this dinner. I'll post the good ones this weekend, as well as pictures of dinner.

As I said, this is a tentative menu. I try not to plan too hard for these things because when it comes to cooking, I'm more interested in the creative process. That's why I rarely make anything more than once. We'll see how much of the stuff on this menu actually comes to fruition...

Amity this post is for you.

2005-11-15T20:56:00.000-08:00

Purple Cauliflower. It’s about as wild as you get in the vegetable world. Apparently, it retains its color when you cook it, unless it is overcooked, in which case it turns green. I roasted it like I do its goodie two-shoed sibling the white one. The results tasted similar. Yet, I would have to say the purple was a bit milder, dare I say tamer. You know what they say about the quiet ones.

Here’s the rough recipe for roasted cauliflower:
1 medium sized head of cauliflower
4-5 cloves of garlic
Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO)
Salt/Pepper to taste (I have a seasoned pepper blend, I like to use here)

Cut cauliflower up into similar sized florets; mix in bowl with olive oil, minced garlic, salt and pepper. Place mix on cookie sheet. Roast oven ~375 degrees for approximately 20 minutes. I usually take it out turn them once. They should have that nice golden brown color on their edges.

Episode 2

2005-11-13T21:28:00.000-08:00

Pumpkin dinner wrap-up, including an on-air demonstration of cooking pumpkin dumplings. It's a short episode this week, but stay tuned for another great installment coming soon.

Download Girl on Girl Cooking Episode 2 right here.

Memory Food

2005-11-13T20:27:00.000-08:00

Tonight I made food from memory. These are foods that my Mom makes that I don't have written recipes for. They are foods I have learned to cook at the elbow of my mother when I was young and as a helper as I grew. They are now implanted in me like part of my genetic code. Chicken cutlets, was a Sunday dinner meal. It is simply chicken breasts, breadcrumbs, (seasoned Italian style with garlic salt/powder, dried parsley, grated cheese, pepper) egg, a bit of milk, and of course the olive oil to fry them in. The chicken breasts (I pound them out to make them thinner) are dipped in an egg and small bit of milk mixture, and then breaded. Breading was a job for my sister and I. As I make these today I still I hear my mother's voice in my head, telling me to press the breadcrumbs in well, so they wouldn't fall off in the frying pan. The frying was always my mother's job. The accompaniment to chicken cutlets was mashed potatoes. These two are a pair I never split up, as I eat almost every bite of the chicken cutlet with a bit of mashed potatoes on my fork.

One of the other memory foods I made this evening was an autumn butternut squash dish. Butternut squash, with butter, brown sugar, golden raisins and walnuts roasted in the oven. It is a sweet dish, but not super sweet like candied yams. The golden raisins add their own amount of sweetness so you can go easy on the brown sugar and the walnuts provide a nice crunch.

Farmer's Market today - OH MY GOD CAULIFLOWER!!!

2005-11-13T12:56:00.000-08:00

Paula and I went to the Farmer's Market on Larchmont Blvd today, and star of the show was definitely cauliflower.

Here are some interesting varieties. On the right is purple cauliflower, regular 'ole cauliflower in the middle, and broccoflower on the left. Broccoflower is a hybrid of broccoli and cauliflower, but purple cauliflower actually appears that way naturally. Cool, huh?

Paula has a great recipe for roasted cauliflower. Maybe if you're nice she'll post it.

pumpkin post

2005-11-11T00:06:00.000-08:00

The pumpkin dinner party was all about the flavor of pumpkin itself as opposed to the other flavors that often accompany pumpkin. Pumpkin is a member of the squash family, but for some reason it hangs out with the sweet spices all the time. We challenged pumpkin to break out of its clique and hang out with some savory friends.

We served our guest two appetizers: roasted pumpkin and stilton on polenta rounds and toasted baguettes smeared with pumpkin pesto. The roasted pumpkin with stilton on polenta was created by Rossanna and I when were brainstorming over the menu. We roasted two small pumpkins that had been seasoned very minimally with just some oil olive and Herbes de Provence. After roasting in the oven, I mashed up the roasted pumpkin with a bit of salt and pepper to taste. The polenta rounds were merely sliced from a cookie dough-looking tube (we cheated and used pre-prepared polenta from Trader Joe’s, for convenience sake only, as we both have made polenta in the past). A scoop of the roasted pumpkin and a dollop of creamy Harrods’s Stilton hand carried from London. These turned out famously, they flew off the platter.

The soup was can you guess? Pumpkin. This pumpkin soup wasn’t your simple pumpkin puree with a bit of crème fraiche. It was pumpkin, chicken, and ham hocks. It a hearty soup, that in big portions can be made into a meal. I love this recipe because it was given to me by my dear friend’s mother. I left one of our post-Thanksgiving visits with a homegrown pumpkin and the recipe in one of my goody bags.

We had two main dish items. The first was pumpkin dumplings, which we made while podcasting, yes that was a plug for the pumpkin cast – check it out. The second entree was pumpkin risotto with seared scallops. The pumpkin risotto was prepared by Nick. I prepared the scallops. We served them separately since we were catering to a partial vegetarian audience. The scallops were lovely. They were buttery and flavored with just the right amount of sage, truffle oil, and then the smooth distinct flavor of the pumpkin risotto paired nicely. I have to admit I was a critic of this pairing at first, seafood with a squash that hangs with sweet stuff? It worked. The pumpkin had made new friends and perhaps taken on a few crushes along the way.

The salad was spinach, avocado, pumpkin seeds, pomegranate seeds with a pumpkin seed oil and lime dressing. The salad was inspired from Nigella Lawson’s cookbook "Feast". Pumpkin seed oil was a splurge. Since nut oil spoils quickly, I am taking recommendations for other recipes to highlight this special oil.

For dessert we let the pumpkin hang out with his homies. But not in the standard pumpkin pie, but in pumpkin cheesecake. Rossanna babied this cheesecake baking it in a water bath not required by the recipe. The taste was moist and flavorful. I have to say that is tasted even better left over the next day.

This is why I love the Farmer's Market

2005-11-07T09:57:00.000-08:00

These pictures were taken at the Farmer's Market on Larchmont Blvd. in Hancock Park last Sunday.

Incidentally, here's an awesome tutorial about how to bust open a pomegranate.

And this is a shout-out to my mom, who loooooves persimmons:

Infatuation du jour: Trader Joe's Wintry Peppermint Wonders.

2005-11-04T16:47:00.000-08:00

Ok everyone run out and try these.

They're crushed chocolate cookies, kinda like Oreos but without anything hydrogenated, and they're covered in dark chocolate, and they're MINTY. These things are ridiculous! And they're like $8, which is a lot for cookies. But they're a helluva splurge.

Adventures in pasta

2005-11-04T12:41:00.000-08:00

So the other day, I was looking up a pasta variety on Google. It was a pasta that I'd had at Blair's in Silverlake about a year ago. They made this really sexy macaroni and cheese with truffle oil (which I have since ripped off countless times). What made it sexy was the smooth square tube-shaped pasta. I couldn't figure out which pasta it was. So I looked up "pasta varieties" on Wikipedia.com. They broke the list into several categories, two of which were "shaped" and "tubular". I narrowed the choices down bit by bit, and finally I thought the one I wanted might be ditalini. Just to make sure, I did an image search for "ditalini" on Google, and instead got a page full of women shoving objects into various orifices....Doh!

Eventually I found out that ditalini wasn't the right variety anyway.

I know most of you are gonna run off to go search for "ditalini" on Google now, but for those of you who'd like to stick around, here's my version of macaroni and cheese with truffle oil. Paula (aka The Sparkler), also made some KILLER mac and cheese this week, and I'll leave it to her to post her recipe.

I never name recipes, but this one is an exception. I call it Grown-Up Macaroni & Cheese.

-Any shaped or tubular pasta. I like penne. (I also like pinwheels, but don't tell anyone)
-a LOT of grated romano or parmesano romano mix.
-full-fat milk or half & half or cream. Your choice.
-fresh parsley
-Salt/pepper
-truffle oil

-Cook and drain the pasta, but retain about a tablespoon or two of the starchy pasta water.
-Put the pasta back in the pot with the retained pasta water.
-Keep a low heat, and start sprinkling in the cheese.
-Add a few tablespoons of cream. Just enough to wet all the cheese and make everything stick to the pasta.
-Add more cheese.
-Add more cheese.
-Add more cheese.
-Add more cream.
-Add more cheese.
-Add salt and pepper to taste.
-Now douse the thing with truffle oil until you can REALLY smell it.
-Chop the parsley and throw it over the pasta. It's both for color and flavor, so add as much as you like and mix it in if you want.
-Add more cheese.

This thing has about 6,000 calories. So, like, eat it with a salad or something. Ok?

Episode 1

2005-10-23T22:05:00.000-07:00

In this, their first (official) podcast attempt, the Girls discuss Silver Lake restaurants, foodie party planning, and much more. Do you want to hear it? Of course you do. Because this is just the beginning.

Download Girl on Girl Cooking: Episode 1 right here.

Test

2005-10-16T08:56:00.000-07:00

Test post